Firstly I have to reiterate that she didn’t present an argument (such as would necessitate a counter-argument) but rather a “cautionary note” that one shouldn’t “automatically assume that human activities can change the climate”. i.e. she was just pointing out that you need “clear and unequivocal evidence” to support such a claim.
Upon reading what Vineeto wrote here, there are two possibilities:
- She never looked beyond this to see why people say that humans cause climate change, shut her mind and ears to any and all arguments against it, and therefore never came upon an argument explaining how humans can cause climate change despite the atmosphere being so big, even one a 2-second Google search would find.
- She did actually look into the presented evidence, thoroughly enough to conclude that they do not have “clear and unequivocal evidence” to support the claim.
Contrary to your reply… you did assume #1. Whence this assumption?
That being, said we can move on to see if the 2-second Google search article provided the necessary clear and unequivocal evidence.
I was replying to what you quoted the article as stating which is that nitrogen and oxygen do “not absorb heat”. It is false, they do absorb heat.
Further, as the earth lets off heat not only via radiation but also via conduction and convection, the entire atmosphere does absorb heat that is coming off of the surface (and not just 0.04% of it).
That is true, but it’s only part of the picture. The Earth also emits heat via conduction and convection. The question is, which is a larger effect, the heat lost via conduction & convection or the heat lost via radiation?
Regarding the effectiveness of heat loss via radiation I’ll direct you to this reddit thread that addresses the question of how the International Space Station loses heat:
zx7: If there were one or two people on the ISS, their bodies would generate a lot of heat. Given that the ISS is surrounded by a (near) vacuum, how does it get rid of this heat so that the temperature on the ISS is comfortable?
robo_reddit: Hey I worked on the ISS thermal control systems. The station is essentially cooled by a water cooler like you see in high end PCs. All of the computers and systems are on cold plates where heat is transferred into water. This is necessary because without gravity air cooling doesn’t work well. The warmed water is pumped to heat exchangers where the energy is transferred into ammonia. The ammonia is pumped through several large radiators where the heat is “shined” into space via infrared. The radiators can be moved to optimize the heat rejection capability. The reason the radiators are so large is that this is a really inefficient method but it’s the only way that works in space.
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i.e. losing heat via infrared is “really inefficient” – that is, compared to conduction & convection.
So to put it in perspective, 100% of the atmosphere is busy being heated up from the surface via conduction & convection, which by the way is also re-radiating infrared back down towards the planet, while 0.04% of the atmosphere is contributing to a reduction of the “really inefficient” radiative heat-loss.
So it’s not clear or unequivocal at all that if this 0.04% jumps to 0.08% and the contribution of the ‘really inefficient’ radiative heat-loss is made even more inefficient, that this would contribute significantly to the warming of the whole atmosphere. Further evidence is required.